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70% of Millennials Are Living Paycheck to Paycheck: Survey:
Millennials' wallets are rather skimpy.
Seventy percent of the generation said they're living paycheck to paycheck, according to a survey by PYMNTS and LendingClub, which analyzed economic data and census-balanced surveys of over 28,000 Americans. It found that about 54% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, but millennials had the biggest broke energy.
By contrast, 40% of baby boomers and seniors said they live paycheck to paycheck, the least of any generation. Living paycheck to paycheck reflects economic needs and wants just as much, if not more than, incomes or wealth levels, according to the report. Age and family status also factor in greatly. This explains why millennials, who turn ages 25 to 40 this year, are struggling.
[...] It doesn't help that millennials have faced one economic challenge after another since the oldest of them graduated into the dismal job market of the 2008 financial crisis. A dozen years later, many are still grappling with the lingering effects of The Great Recession, struggling to build wealth while trying to afford soaring costs for things like housing and healthcare and shouldering the lion's share of America's student-loan debt.
The pandemic threw yet another wrench into their plans by giving them their second recession and second housing crisis before the age of 40. The report acknowledges that the pandemic played a major role in that stretched thin feeling.
[...] It seems, then, that it's a combination of external economic circumstances, a precarious life stage, and some spending habits that are leaving millennials feeling strapped for cash.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday September 29 2021, @03:40PM (2 children)
Haha, cruises?????
If there's one thing I know about Millennials it's that they love being shoved into tiny quarters with a bunch of annoying kids, shitty buffet food and old people!
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday September 29 2021, @04:02PM (1 child)
It was around the Greek islands, AFAIK that's the standard way to see them, some tour package they booked.
My parents went on a cruise too before they got married: A thermos of tea on a ferry across the harbour. That's the difference between living within your means and living beyond your means.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @11:27AM
I wrote this elsewhere, but I have four younger brothers that are Millennials and entertainment - including smart phone payments, smart phone plans, streaming services, gaming services, trips to the movies, and coffee from coffee shops - take up less than $50 a month each for three of them and less than $100 a month for the fourth. Rent, health insurance, and student loan payments take about $2000 a month for each. They don't go on vacations, and didn't go on vacations before the pandemic. The ones that have high end smart phones got them as a gift.
So tell me how cutting out entertainment would solve their financial problems.
I know there are people spending money they don't have on vacations, or on a brand new pickup truck, or whatever. But there are millions of Millennials that are doing everything by the book, and then they have Gen X'ers and Boomers standing there and saying, "Back in my day, we walked uphill in the snow barefoot to school, both ways. If you just canceled your $8/month Netflix subscription and sold off that $400 TV, all your financial problems would be over, whippersnapper!" Aside from vacations, entertainment is far cheaper now relative to minimum wage than it was fifty years ago. Everything else has gotten more expensive, and for the most part that's what's burying Millennials. And telling someone up to their eyeballs in medical debt or student loan debt that cutting out the last things in life they enjoy is a pretty asshole thing to do.